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Medium Format: Is It Right For You?
If you’re like many photographers, you’re always looking for the perfect image. In addition to being aesthetically and compositionally flawless, you also crave perfect representation of color, texture, and the finest of details. You want your photos to be as detailed as possible, showing on the subtle colors and sharp edges of your real world subjects. You’re looking for the best possible image.
Medium format photography can help get you this image. Medium format, in contrast to 35mm, uses a much larger film size. By using a larger film area, medium format cameras, such as the famous Hasselblad H series can capture significantly more information, and therefore a much sharper, more vibrant image. The large a slide or a negative is, the better image it will give, since the larger area allows for so much more photographic information.
Additionally, since medium format cameras a generally all “professional” cameras, the quality of the lenses used is very high. Some of the best lenses ever made have been for medium format cameras. You’re not going to find much cheap, low quality consumer grade glass in the medium format world, though TLR cameras like the Rollei TLRs can be a little cheaper. Rather, the finest lens makers of all times have tasked their best engineers with the mission of creating amazing lenses for their medium format cameras. Most of these lenses will create images of the highest quality possible.
All these factors add up to give you an amazing quality image that will blow away any 35mm image taken under similar conditions. If you look at a medium format negative or slide under a loupe, you will be shocked by the magnitude of detail that is visible. It’s hard to describe, but the difference is immediately visible and striking. This is not a small quality improvement that is visible to only an elite few, this is a radical change in the quality of your photos.
Indeed, it is this quality that leads many professionals to deal with the added cost, size, and weight of medium format gear. To be sure, its not the most convenient and affordable of formats. The larger negative requires a larger, more complex camera to deal with. A larger lens is required to focus enough light to expose the medium format film pane. These larger, more complex cameras and lenses are also significantly more expensive than 35mm cameras. Medium format cameras are not for the average photographer, but rather for the professional or amateur who demands only the best looking images possible, while still allowing for some flexibility and portability, which large format lacks.
So, should you go out and buy a medium format camera today? Typically not, given the way medium format is so complex. However, if you’re looking to greatly improve the quality of your images, and you’re not too daunted by the complexities and expense involved with a medium format camera, you should start shopping for one today, as nothing else will fulfill that desire as well as medium format camera can.
Full Frame vs. Crop DSLRs: Pros and Cons
The topic of sensor size always comes up when shopping for a digital SLR. As you probably know, the sensor in a digital camera is responsible for capturing the image. Digital SLRs are able to get much better picture quality than point and shoots due to their much higher quality image sensors. In general, the bigger the sensor, the better the image quality.
However, a larger image sensor also means higher cost, so SLR manufacturers had to compromise. Ideally, a digital SLR sensor would be exactly the same size as a frame of 35mm film. However, the cost of producing a sensor like this is so high that most manufacturers decided to create a smaller sized sensor, one that is a fair amount smaller than a full sized sensor. This creates the so called “crop factor”
This crop factor is usually a number around 1.5. Basically, this means that if you were to look at a full 35mm frame, the crop sensor would only capture a 1.5x crop of the frame. In essence, you get an closer view with an equivalent focal length. This means that your wide angle lenses will be less wide, and that your telephoto lenses will have more reach. Note that for a given focal length, the depth of field will remain the same.
For many photographers, these crop sensors work great. If you’re into sports, wildlife, or any telephoto heavy photography discipline, the extra “reach” you get from the crop sensor really comes in handy at times. You can also get extremely affordable crop frame bodies, such as Nikon’s D40. These cameras are a real boon to amateur photographers.
However, full frame sensors still hold a serious advantage in many real world situations. As I said before, bigger equals better when it comes to image quality. Full frame sensors can deliver a much sharper, smooth image at higher ISOs than a cropped sensor can. If you work in low light conditions, this is a great feature. If you're a photographer who uses a lot of wide angle lenses, a full frame body is the best choice, since you'll have the most options. New cameras such as the Canon 5D Mark II make it easier to afford these cameras, as well.
Overall, choosing your sensor format shouldn’t be the only factor that you take into account when choosing a new camera, but it should be a major one. If you can swing the price, the amazing image quality and low light performance of a full frame sensor will astound you. Otherwise, you might be better off saving your money and getting a cropped sensor camera. Either way, you can still take great pictures.
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